By Terri Hallenbeck

For 20 years, the Knoll, which sits on a hill just past McCardell Bicentennial Hall, has been a destination for students, faculty, and staff in search of a place for refuge, research, and recreation.

“Everyone who comes to the Knoll loves the Knoll,” said Crystal Zhou ’23.5, a Knoll intern. 

The garden was the brainchild of Bennett Konesni ’04.5 and Jean Hamilton ’04.5. In the 20 years since its inception, academic classes have gone to the Knoll to study soil, wildlife, hydrogeology, dance, food systems, and landscapes. Student interns and volunteers have learned how to coax fruits, vegetables, and herbs to life and deliver the resulting produce to dining halls and local charities. The Knoll has hosted pizza gatherings and meditation circles. It was even blessed by the Dalai Lama in 2012. 

“It feels like a place that is part of campus proximity-wise but so different from the rest of campus,” said Lauren Gemery ’23, a conservation biology major and Knoll intern from Norwich, Vermont. “There’s so much student-led learning here.” 

For students whose classroom time is spent on theory, the Knoll provides a change of pace. 

“This is a place where I could come with no skills,” Zhou said. “I could start from scratch with a mentor who is incredible (Megan Osterhout Brakeley ’06, associate director of the Knoll). Once I came here, I acquired skills to grow plants that I enjoy cooking and eating.” 

Over the years, the Knoll has grown to include a well, solar panels, a pizza oven, a labyrinth, and its newest feature, an Abenaki longhouse made of maple saplings harvested on College lands by students in the Architecture and the Environment course.

The longhouse will serve both as a gathering place for the School of Abenaki, which began at the summer Middlebury Language Schools in 2020, and as a place to foster conversations about the land’s Native American origins, a history that dwarfs the Knoll’s timeline by centuries.

During the 2023 Fall Family Weekend, Middlebury celebrated two decades of the Knoll with events including garden volunteer hours, a harvest festival that drew more than 1,100 attendees, and a poetry workshop with Julia Alvarez ’71. The story of the Knoll is now also featured in print: a collaborative anthology, Growing with the Knoll: 20 years in the Garden, edited by Aria Bowden ’23, was published by New Perennials Publishing this fall.